


i grew tired of this a long time ago

by yukioaltlol



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27452170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yukioaltlol/pseuds/yukioaltlol
Summary: He wishes he could go back.
Relationships: Okumura Yukio/Shima Renzou, implied?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	i grew tired of this a long time ago

**Author's Note:**

> Or, an exercise in how much I can project my issues onto poor Yukio in less than 2k words. Vent fic but not really, since I was feeling alright when I wrote it, but vent fic regardless. Tread carefully, lots of triggers here. It's canon-typical Yukio, but with an ED because that is how I am.
> 
> Also, this is an AU where Renzou and Yukio are 17 and spend a few years in the Illuminati, who aren't as caught up on things as they are in canon. I just wanted to write Yukishima but not the other characters, honestly.
> 
> This is on a throwaway account because my friends know my main, but I don't want them knowing about my ED problems. I would make it anonymous but I might want to reclaim it in the future, so throwaway.

He’s tired of this. He really is.  
  
Yukio knows it’s absolutely fucking pointless to be doing this, but he has to. He feels it in his bones, it’s a compulsion he’s had for the last five goddamn years and he desperately wishes it never started but he can’t go back.  
  
As much as he wishes he could redo the last five years, but he can’t.  
  
But god, he wishes he could.  
  
He’s walking back from an Illuminati strategy meeting. He doesn’t think he was cleared for it, but Renzou’s recent promotion likely gained him the power to bring Yukio along for the ride. That promotion also brought Renzou more spy duties, however, so he had to bow out halfway through to reach the bottom of his daily to-do list of treason faster. Yukio doesn’t mind; he hasn’t been left alone in days, and he desperately craved this time to empty his head of recent thoughts.  
  
Even besides all the bullshit that’s happened since he was twelve, which keeps frantically trying to bubble to the top of his near boiling thoughts, going back would fix so many fucking things. Especially _this_.  
  
He hates waiting hours until eating anything, food being the only fucking thing on his mind the entire day and his only priority until the clock strikes whatever and he finally lets the shaking stop. He hates finding every little excuse to stand up, to walk and pace and run around the field and shoot his gun again and again and again and _again_ \- not now.  
  
He fucking _despises_ when he gives in halfway through and eats even the tiniest bit of food that still feels like so fucking much, when it bogs him down and fills his limbs with poison and lead and makes him want to scream and hit something and slice open his skin out of frustration and pure rage.  
  
But he can’t stop. He knows he can’t. He stumbled across the rabbit hole five years ago, peered inside, and then jumped straight down. He wanted this. It’s his fault and he knows it.  
  
He’s beginning to spiral when he pauses his thoughts and stops walking. The sterile nothingness of the walls digs into his eyes and stabs at his building headache, and he realizes he’s far from his room. But almost miraculously, he spots a sign pointing to the cafeteria, and manages to keep his thoughts on hold long enough to get a glass of water and sit down. (Because the Illuminati, as large as it is, does not settle for plastic cups. Yukio finds it absurd, but he hasn’t questioned it in the last year, and probably never will, unless he’s feeling particularly agitated some day.)  
  
With the cafeteria empty at near midnight, besides the lone Illuminati janitor aimlessly staring at the floor from within the kitchen with a broom and not a spec of motivation left to keep going, Yukio finally starts picking at the mental dam holding his angst again, and has to pick just carefully enough so it doesn’t fucking crash open and hit him so hard he can’t handle it. He’s meticulous and slow and only lets a _tiny_ bit fall out.  
  
It’s not even about the weight. It barely is. He honestly doesn’t care. The loss of weight is an extra bonus; his arms long stopped filling his sleeves, his bones feel sharper through his skin, everything feels _lighter_ \- but it doesn’t matter to him. It’s never been about that anyway. It’s always been the control.  
  
The control is the most addicting part of it.  
  
He feels almost fucking euphoric when he makes it to the end of the day having eaten absolutely nothing in the last 36 hours. The high from both the hunger and the success he lives off of for days. It sustains him when there’s nothing else keeping him going.  
  
And honestly, it’s probably saved him from a lot more attempts. Because without it, he would’ve hit rock bottom a lot more than he has already. (Which is a lot for a person his age, but he conciously-unconciously chooses to ignore that.)  
  
The worst part about it is how much of a fucking asshole it makes him.  
  
Yukio has never been a kind person. Under the facade he put up for years, he was a bitter, stubborn dick to his brother, and once he shattered the facade when he defected, it became public knowledge to everyone.  
  
But _god_ , this makes it even worse.  
  
Erratic emotions are a brutal side effect of starvation. It amplifies his worst emotions and makes sure _everyone_ in earshot knows how he’s feeling that evening. It makes him a massive asshole and he knows it, but he doesn’t. Because the fun part, is that he doesn’t even realize it.  
  
It’s _insidious_. It peeks out through his sentences, dripping from each word, and the venom only strengthens with each hour. He spits out vile when talking to Homare or Renzou sometimes, absolute fucking _filth_ , and he doesn’t even realize it until hours later. It slips out so fast, so rapidly, that he doesn’t even notice it. He’s too blinded by his mind yelling out _eat, eat, eat, please_ , and too distracted trying to beat his mind into submission and ignorance, that he doesn’t even notice himself being a fucking dick to the people closest to him. Fantastic.  
  
Things start moving faster now. He can’t even see the table in front of him anymore because the red is intensifying and blurring and the cold emanating from the glass feels like it’s about to incinerate his hand. Everything is angry and red and hot and _fuck_. His hand tightens in his hair and the fantasy heat of the glass burns his other hand even more.  
  
Really, he doesn’t even care what happens to him because of this. He hasn’t given a single shit about himself in a decade and he’s not going to start anytime soon. But if there was one thing he could get back, he wishes he could get back his kindness. His compassion.  
  
He wishes he still knew how to be _nice_ to people. But that was beaten out of him beginning at age seven and likely disappeared for good at age twelve. The eating disorder took whatever residual kindness he had left and absolutely annihilated it. His acting got better as his true feelings were shot to fucking death.  
  
As much as Renzou reassures him that he’s fine, _they’re_ fine, he’s not doing anything wrong with them, he just wants Yukio to take care of himself for once, Yukio just doesn’t see it. He doesn’t. He really doesn’t, and never will. There is not a shred of kindness left in him and he’s known it for years. He has no clue what Renzou sees in him.  
  
He doesn’t believe Renzou when he says he doesn’t see it.  
  
There is no fucking way he doesn’t. It took over his life years ago and, despite everything he’s had to think about and deal with, this has been front and center the whole time. It’s always at the top of his mind, begging and screeching its throat raw for Yukio’s attention, never letting him look away for a moment out of fear he fucked up and broke his own rules.  
  
And yet, Renzou says he doesn’t see it. That he only realized when Yukio actually started doing the really stupid shit like not eating for days or sticking his fingers down his throat when things were really getting bad. He never saw it until then. Yukio doesn’t fucking get it.  
  
But, he does. Because he knows he’s a goddamn idiot. _Fuck_.  
  
He smashes the damn cup, the shards spilling out all over the table and covering his hand. Because of course he did that. Of course. God fucking damn it.  
  
(He scarcely notices the janitor out of the corner of his eye, vaguely glancing out from behind his thinning hair and squinting at the figure crumbling over the table, before promptly looking back to his mop. It’s always been Illuminati protocol to ignore what happens around you, unless it’s treason.)  
  
He’s tired. He’s _exhausted_. He knows Renzou doesn’t see it because it’s a trivial fucking problem he personally paid enough attention to so it could get worse. It wasn’t bad until he actually started caring about it and wanted what it would give him. He wanted the control so bad, he wrecked his body and went out of his way to burn every single bridge he had pre-defection except Renzou (and Saburota, but he’s not going there right now. Absolutely not).  
  
It’s something that took him over, and Renzou didn’t see it, because outside of his diseased brain, it’s fucking _tiny_. It’s not the immense situation he always imagines it as, how everyone can see what the hell is wrong with him and how he wishes someone would do something because he wants the attention, but only something that became apparent when people noticed how he never ate, how he was _always_ shaking, how he stumbled sometimes. When things got really bad, that’s when people noticed.  
  
He gets it. But he doesn’t.  
  
Yukio leaves the shards on the table. The janitor can toss them in the trash, or the next one can deal with it when their shift comes. He doesn’t even know how he made it to his room through the haze in his head, but he manages to stumble onto his bed and squeezes the sheets under him in a vice grip. He barely registers the drying blood on his hand from the cuts before he’s forcing himself into sleep fast enough to forget the last hour.  
  
He’s so fucking tired.


End file.
